


Night by Night

by jerseydevious



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Not Canon Compliant, Out of character I know, and they accidentally stumble into having a coherent communication, in each other's direction, in which i throw anakin and obi-wan together, it's not canon compliant because they had emotions, without copious amounts of murder and a dismemberment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28646346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Anakin and Obi-Wan are both injured and trapped in a cave-in, with nothing to do but have an emotion or five, and no one else to have these emotions at but each other.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 85
Kudos: 380





	Night by Night

**Author's Note:**

> My sleeping schedule has been thrown off by very many annoying disturbances, and now I post sappy Obi-Wan and Anakin fanfic at 3am, because I have no control over my life. I love them, your honor, but they're so stupid and they love each other so much until they DON'T, because someone's mentally unstable and someone listened to Palpatine. Smh. 
> 
> Warning for emotions that would break the canon timeline

The first thing Anakin became aware of was the Force, because it was the first thing he was always aware of—it sang low songs of death, ripples reverberating against him as lives winked out on this planet, on the next, on the next. Some of it was what Anakin called the _background extinction rate,_ after something he’d learned in his studies at the Temple when he was younger; _some death is natural,_ Shaak Ti had said. She’d always had a lovely voice. _Some death is required for balance. As species evolve and succeed, there will always be the species that fail, and die off naturally. As the Force is life it is also death._ There was always someone dying, somewhere, that Anakin could feel. But most of it, most of it near him, was the sharp stab wounds of shouts that were silenced a second too quickly, was the product of war. The Force, and its low mourning songs, reached for him and curled around him so thick with the violence of it all he could breathe it in, like ash and smoke. It was one of his earliest lessons—sometimes to breathe was to inhale a funerary cavalcade, but as long as you were aware of someone else dying, you were not. And if you were not dead or dying, you had work to do, and in the desert the work was done night by night as it was done day by day.

The second thing Anakin was aware of were hands ghosting over his robes, and Anakin held himself still and kept his face perfectly slack. This, too, was of his earliest lessons—hands would crawl over him, and he would have to let them unless someone wanted him to snarl back. Sometimes they liked it better when he was straining at the leash. There wasn’t a thing like defiance, especially when he’d been younger and his chain had wound its way all the way back to Gardulla the Hutt—there were some things, though, that looked like defiance. Whatever was desirable was demanded. Sometimes he would be asked to put up a fight, because it was more of a spectacle, more to look and see, or he would be asked flat and nondescript obedience. If he were being hurt, sometimes they liked it, to see that hurt—it put him in good favor with the handlers, to know what they liked to see—but also sometimes they had no patience for his pain, and he was again asked flat and nondescript obedience. The best thing to start with was always the obedience. He could take a hit that was a fraction harder, a humiliation that was a fraction worse, if someone was trying to pry a reaction out of him; he couldn’t take a hit that was four times harder, a humiliation that was four times worse, for insulting someone’s pride at the wrong time.

His head was slow and his mouth tasted soft and sticky and there was blood flooding it, but from where he couldn’t tell. The hands tugged at his robes, trying to peel them back, and Anakin held himself stiffly and thought _go slack like a corpse and let them have their way,_ and the Force snapped with a horror that wasn’t his own. The pain floated to him at the same time the voice did. “What am I going to do with you, padawan mine,” the voice murmured, and then Anakin relaxed himself, because only Obi-Wan used the ridiculous phrase _padawan mine,_ and he knew Obi-Wan’s horror well. It was the one emotion his Master had always struggled to keep tied up in himself.

“M’ster,” Anakin choked out, but in moving his tongue and mouth the blood poured back down his throat and into his lungs and he twisted over to cough against the ground. His left side crackled to life in a barrage of pain, sharp and stabbing around his ribs and shoulder and duller over his hip and thigh, and something hot like fire was slithering around in his chest every time he coughed. It may well have been his lungs.

Obi-Wan pushed him down by the shoulders. “You should lay back, if I can’t look over you.”

Anakin wheezed out a last pathetic little wet gasp, and gingerly laid himself back down. He tried to wipe his mouth of the blood but it wasn’t cooperating, and distantly he became aware of a throbbing pain at the base of it, where the prosthetic met skin. “Arm’s—not working,” he said, after a long moment. It hurt often, these days, from how much Anakin put it through; not at all easy to forget that the base of his flesh was more sensitive than if his arm had been whole, but nonetheless, the work was done day by day and night by night.

“I should think not,” Obi-Wan said. “We need to have it redesigned.”

“For why,” Anakin murmured, eyes fluttering closed. After a moment, rough cloth rubbed at his mouth—the hem of Obi-Wan’s robe, he realized, and he would have smiled at it, if he could figure out how any of his nerve endings worked. There would be months where Anakin slowly convinced himself that he’d been correct, that Obi-Wan’s work with him was purely functional, and then sometimes Obi-Wan’s frosty exterior would melt just so. Rare enough that Anakin always questioned whether Obi-Wan would ever think of him as fondly as Anakin thought of his old Master, but sometimes, sometimes—sometimes he thought he may be lucky in the end.

“Because the base of it has insufficient insulation, clearly, and as it stands, you’re not a Jedi Knight, you’re a lightning rod,” Obi-Wan said, with false amusement. He still felt like a knot of horror in the Force, the feeling familiar enough to Anakin that he felt he could run his hands over it, almost, know the grooves and divots of it. _Why is it that I know your horror better than any other part of you,_ he would have asked, if that was a question he could ask.

“When’d I get electrocuted.”

Obi-Wan blew out a breath. “Prior to the building collapsing on top of us, of course.”

Anakin huffed. “It collapsed?”

“You’re laying on cracked duracrete foundation, and you didn’t notice?”

Anakin waved his working hand. “It’s—y’know. It’s all a blur, I s’pose.”

Once Obi-Wan pointed it out, Anakin became aware of a thousand points of pressure, of rocky bits of duracrete digging into about every piece of him. He ached for Padme’s million-threadcount sheets, the comforter she had on that massive bed of hers that was the softest thing he’d felt in his entire life—he’d had no idea that fabric could get that soft. _I can buy you one, Ani, it’s not all that special,_ she always said, when he wrapped up in it while he was there. _It’s better if it smells like you,_ he’d say, instead of saying that the Jedi Order encouraged one to limit material possessions as much as possible, and Anakin’s personal collection of scrap parts and half-finished projects had annoyed more than one traditionalist Jedi Master. Most notably, of course, Obi-Wan. He ached for her, too, but he couldn’t think like that, not with Obi-Wan next to him. He hoped she was safe.

“Can you move?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Yes.”

Obi-Wan snorted. “You’re an awful liar, Anakin. I can try to use the Force to move some of the debris, but I can’t do it alone.”

Anakin’s eyes flickered open. There was a network of crisscrossing pipes above him, warped and bent and some spraying water—the pipes seemed to work almost like a net, catching and dispersing the weight of the rubble above them. There wasn’t an opening that Anakin could see, and it was really a question of how much air they had and how long the pipes could hold out against what was above them. The Force swirled and shoved at the right corner, directed by Obi-Wan, and Anakin flicked his hand and tried to join him—but his focus was scattered and his head throbbed, hard, like it was being cleaved in half.

“Stop,” Obi-Wan said. “Stop, Anakin, this is delicate. If we do it wrong, we’ll get crushed.”

Anakin’s eyes slid back closed. There was a clear undertone of disappointment in Obi-Wan’s words; what use was a scale-breaking midichlorian count if it was almost never useful? Even the dim light from Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, propped against a rock and flooding their cavern with blue flame, stabbed him behind the eyes and made him want to vomit. “Might have a concussion,” he mumbled.

“That’s our luck, is it not,” Obi-Wan said.

“How’d I get smashed to pieces and you’re fine,” Anakin whined. _“If_ you’re fine. I bet you’re holding out on me, Master. You have a punctured lung and are about to drown in your own blood.”

Obi-Wan flicked his shoulder. “None of that, padawan. That’s rather dark, even for you.”

Anakin swatted at his hand. “You always one-up me somehow.”

“Yes, well, if you consider a broken arm one-upping you,” Obi-Wan said, tightly.

Anakin slitted his eyes. Obi-Wan had already set it, most probably, and he’d fashioned a sling out of his robe. Anakin would have to follow Obi-Wan to the Temple’s quartermaster, because he always enjoyed it when Obi-Wan had to explain how he’d gone through so many sets of robes in such a short time. _Dark robes mean the blood doesn’t show up,_ Anakin had pointed out, once, and Obi-Wan had given him a long, hard look and said, _and imagine the uproar if I started having as sad a taste in fashion as you._ “Oh, don’t complain, you have two arms,” Anakin said, even as he leached out through the Force, prodding at that furious ache, trying to think of _cool, cooling, relax, numb, not hurting._ He wondered if it helped at all.

Obi-Wan didn’t slide into the banter the same as he usually did, and after several minutes Anakin squinted at him—in the blue of lightsaber, the lines and valleys of his face were wide. He looked exhausted. He looked like he was grieving. His knee was close enough to Anakin’s good hand that if Anakin leaned a bit, he could reach out and squeeze it, and he did; it was, perhaps, an invasion of the private space Obi-Wan kept so tightly around himself. But he had nothing else to offer.

Obi-Wan blinked down at Anakin’s hand on his knee, surprised, and then Anakin moved to pull it away, but Obi-Wan’s own hand held it there. The contact was like sparks from a solder pen, flicking against Anakin’s skin, wonderful and biting all at once.

“I don’t know how you ever forgave me,” he said.

_“E chu ta,”_ Anakin hissed. _“Kairbeck te._ Forgave you for what, exactly?”

Obi-Wan’s fingers then prodded at Anakin’s knuckles. He didn’t reprimand the Huttese cursing, which was generally how Anakin knew Obi-Wan was utterly exhausted—Obi-Wan generally leapt at the chance to criticize something. “Geonosis. Losing your hand. You only had to duel with our dear Count because I lost, and you paid most dearly for that. I am your master, and I’m supposed to—I’m supposed to _protect_ you.”

Anakin squirmed. He didn’t like remembering dueling Dooku on Geonosis; it was the worst duel he’d ever fought in his life, a hasty, rage-induced act of spontaneity and stupidity. There was no grace to it, none at all, as preoccupied as he’d been with Padme on the sand and possibly dead, and his cheeks burned to remember it. He’d never thought Obi-Wan would have blamed himself for it. He’d always thought his Master’s lingering looks at his prosthetic were a mixture of pity and _yes, boy, you earned that, you dug your grave now lie in the sand._

“It’s not your fault,” Anakin said. “There was nothing to forgive. It’s not so bad. I kind of like having a metal arm.”

Obi-Wan raised a brow so severely Anakin could see it even in the din. “Truly?”  
  


“Yeah, I always have something to mess with. It’s like how I used to sneak mouse droids in my robe pockets to fiddle with, but this one’s attached, so no one can confiscate it.”

Obi-Wan stared at him, pale eyes wide with some form of shock, and then he threw his head back and laughed. It occurred then to Anakin that as rare a sound as Obi-Wan’s laugh had always been, it was even rarer now. All laughter was rare on the frontlines. He tried to hold on to the sound, the small echo of it, because it’d be months before he heard it again, if not more. He couldn’t be whatever it was that Obi-Wan needed—he couldn’t even manage being what Obi-Wan wanted—but sometimes he enjoyed pretending, and if he closed his eyes and held onto the sound of that laughter, he was close enough.

Obi-Wan’s hand, still covering Anakin’s, still sending sparks crawling up Anakin’s arm, squeezed his. “Of course,” he said, warmly. “Yes, that’s—that sounds quite like you. Ever the cyclone of nuts and bolts, discarded everywhere.”

“Did you send up a signal,” Anakin blurted, suddenly.

Obi-Wan shifted. “Yes, of course,” he said, and there was something reproachful about it.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin said, licking his lips. They still tasted like blood. “I didn’t think about it, until—now. Tired. Needed to check.”

“Concussed,” Obi-Wan corrected. “But tired, as well, I should think. Captain Rex is quite keen about telling on your sleeping patterns, or lack thereof, padawan mine. He seems rather concerned.”

“Asking Rex is low,” Anakin said. _He seems rather concerned_ stung more than Anakin would have liked it to. “Why don’t I interview Cody about how much you sleep, between commanding the 212th and coordinating all of the Open Circle Fleet.”

“Cody has far too much respect for my privacy, firstly, and secondly, I sleep rather well. Some of us organize our time.”

“I could convince him,” Anakin said, ignoring _organize our time,_ because clearly Obi-Wan was deflecting and deflecting badly. “I can be persuasive.”

“No, you absolutely cannot.”

Anakin pushed closer to Obi-Wan, and tried to justify it by suggesting he was just moving off of the piece of rebar digging into the small of his back—but in truth, he just felt like being closer. Always more than a little dangerous, but Anakin never really stopped at anything for danger’s sake. “I was persuasive at least once,” Anakin said. “I got trained by the Order, after all.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No, Anakin, that was more Master Qui-Gon’s influence than yours. Flying into a firefight may have helped, however. It was rather bold. I was impressed myself, even if I thought you were more than a bit arrogant to have done it.”

“That was an _accident.”_

“You cannot _accidentally_ fly into a firefight,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s not possible. We’ve had this argument.”

“It _is!”_ Anakin said. “It _is,_ it was on autopilot, you can ask Artoo whenever we get out of here what happened.”

Obi-Wan sniffed. “I don’t speak binary, because I am not a droid.”

“You’re too boring to be a droid,” Anakin muttered.

Obi-Wan swatted his shoulder. “If you slept half as often as you insulted me, you’d be well-rested.”

It flicked Anakin on the raw, how often Obi-Wan brought up his sleep—every time it felt like a knife to the chest, over and over. He could never pinpoint why it bothered him, either. It just simply did. “If you think I’m unfit for duty, you can talk to the Council and have me removed, or whatever. I don’t care.”

Obi-Wan bristled, both stiffening physically and drawing the Force around him like a wall. “You’re jumping to conclusions,” he said. “I don’t think you’re unfit for anything, I just think you should maintain yourself—your body is an extension of the Force, and it—”

“Be quiet,” Anakin interrupted.

He didn’t feel much like an extension of the Force, hurting in nine separate points in nine separate ways, his brain slipping like the light of the stars on transparisteel. These days his knees hammered with pain and every part of him was sore every day, his injured arm was always swollen and uncomfortable and he drank enough caff that it may well have been what his blood was made of, now. It took painkillers to get him up in the morning and painkillers to get him down at night, and most nights he didn’t even sleep, for the endless death he dreamed about every time he closed his eyes. If he were an extension of the Force, he would be an extension of the song it sang when lives winked out of existence faster than the Force could balance them out; the funerary cavalcade.

“Am I allowed to look at your injuries, now,” Obi-Wan said.

“Never said you weren’t.”

There was that thoughtful, hooded look on Obi-Wan’s face, and he said, “I—disturbed you, earlier.”

“I don’t think I felt very disturbed,” Anakin said, mildly.

“You were half-conscious, you weren’t using your mental guards quite well,” Obi-Wan said. “And we are—more _attuned,_ than the average team.”

“Stop criticizing me,” Anakin snapped. “You didn’t want to cut the training bond either, we’re attuned because you wanted it that way.” _For the war,_ Anakin hesitated to add, because that had been Obi-Wan’s justification _—you were just made a Knight,_ he’d said, softly, while Anakin was tweaking the servomotors in his metal wrist. _I’d feel more comfortable if—if you wanted to, of course—we could avoid severing the bond for now. Just until you’re steady. It’s not often, that Jedi are Knighted and then sent off to war._ He liked the tendril of the bond. He liked having Obi-Wan close. He resented that it was there because Obi-Wan didn’t trust him.

“It wasn’t a criticism, Anakin, you’re—tired, I supposed. I shouldn’t argue with you. I don’t have the energy for it,” Obi-Wan said.

“I don’t,” Anakin said, and then swallowed, “I don’t have the energy for everything to be a slight against me. I can’t do it, Obi-Wan. I can’t fight at your side while fighting with you. I don’t know why everything is—” and from there, Anakin broke off into a long string of less-than-pleasant Huttese swears.

Obi-Wan watched him cautiously. “That’s the issue, padawan. I’m not trying to fight with you.”

“You’re so infuriating,” Anakin said, venomously. “You’re infuriating, Master, you really are. You never trust me to be able to—to do anything. You’re always prodding and pointing out something I’m doing wrong, even if you’re doing the same thing—I’ve never slept well, and neither have you, and it’s—it’s a problem now? You made a promise to Qui-Gon that you’d train me, you did, and you can give it up now. I’m trained. You’re done.”  
  


“You’re trained,” Obi-Wan said, slowly, and it was the stiffness in his tone that crawled beneath Anakin’s skin and sparked a fire.

Anakin ripped his hand away from Obi-Wan’s and pushed himself upright. In the pale blue of their cavern, Obi-Wan looked like he’d been slapped, but Anakin’s heart hammered beat after painful beat and it felt utterly divine to snarl out his poison. It felt the way the Greater Krayts must have when they ripped sarlaccs up from the sand, like ridding the desert of its evil. “You make it so difficult,” Anakin said. “You make it impossible. I know that you’ll mean more to me than I ever will to you. You’re closer than a brother to me, or something like a father, or—I don’t know. You’re my Master, the only one I’ll ever have, and I—you bring it up, every single time. How little you trust me. I hate it, and I hate it more than anything, and—the worst part is, you’re done. You finished training me. You don’t have to be here, and you only are because you trust me that little. It’s infuriating.”

Obi-Wan looked at him, light eyes wide and sapped of all color in the dark. “Is that—is that all?”

Anakin stared at him incredulously. “Is that all,” he sneered.

“Please stop,” Obi-Wan said, softly. “I did not—I’m not trying to come off badly, padawan. But if you want to discuss, everything ought to be on the table at once, I should think.”

“This isn’t a—”

“It is,” Obi-Wan snapped. “It very much is. Just because you feel something does not make it true, Anakin.”

Anakin’s spine straightened, and his body was a heavy tangle of agony, but his rage was pulsing in his ears. “You’re so—”

Obi-Wan clicked his tongue. “This is a debate, and you’ve spoken your piece. I’m not going to let it stand. I’m not sure when you thought so little of me that I’d—Anakin. When you were young, when I had just lost Master Qui-Gon, training you was his final wish. That is why I took you as my padawan, and that’s why I put that braid in your hair. I won’t deny that it wasn’t a choice I made myself, because to deny that would be to lie to you, and I will not lie to you.”

Anakin jerked his head away, throat bobbing. There was the heat behind his eyes, and the stiffness in his throat, and he’d been so stupid to start this conversation—he could have held on to Obi-Wan, he could have—but then Obi-Wan’s warm fingers were tugging at his chin. Anakin was so startled by the touch that he was boneless, because it was so achingly rare that Obi-Wan reached for him.

“But if I had known,” Obi-Wan said, seriously, his gaze cutting Anakin to the quick, “if I had known how much I would come to care for you, I would have chosen you a thousand times over. I would choose you now a thousand times over. We had, and still have, and likely will continue to have, difficult times. No matter how difficult it gets, I will choose you, again and again. You are my brother, Anakin, and I—love you.”

Anakin let out a strangled, cut off cry from the back of his throat, and he wrapped his good hand around Obi-Wan’s wrist. He tried to breathe, and found he couldn’t, because the stiffness in his throat had turned to fire, but it was a blessed fire—a cleansing one. If it could burn him to the root, and replace him with the warmth in his chest, he would choose that a thousand times over. “You mean it,” he gasped out, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying it. “You really mean that?”

“I would swear my life and my lightsaber on it,” Obi-Wan said, steadily. “By the Force, Anakin, I thought—I thought you knew, all this time. I thought you knew. I thought I had proven it to you.”

_You are my brother, Anakin, and I love you,_ he’d said, those were the words he’d said. I would choose you a thousand times over. The Force thrummed with it all; Obi-Wan had always felt to Anakin like water, foreign to him in every fashion possible but all the more fascinating because of it. Obi-Wan could be both the thundering sea and the soft trickle of the creek that tumbled downhill, a torrential downpour or dew on morning leaves, and all Anakin could taste was the smell of a world after it rained. Cool, soft water running over his hands, the smell of the Stewjonian oil Obi-Wan laced his beard with, the only acknowledgement of his homeworld Obi-Wan ever really allowed himself. When Anakin was younger, he used to steal Obi-Wan’s thick outer robes to huddle beneath because Coruscant, and especially the regulated environment of the Temple, was unbearably cold. Anakin was still always unbearably cold, like he ran a few degrees hotter than everywhere he went, and sometimes when he couldn’t stand it he’d snatch Obi-Wan’s robes again. Maybe Obi-Wan had never minded as much as Anakin had thought he did.

“Maybe you did. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know what people really mean,” Anakin said. _I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, you said it and I’ll never stop hearing it,_ was what he himself had meant.

Obi-Wan’s hand moved to cup his cheek, and Anakin only realized he was crying when Obi-Wan thumbed away the tears. He’d never done that before. When Anakin had cried near Obi-Wan—and he had an embarrassing amount, especially when he was younger—the closest Obi-Wan had gotten was a gentle shoulder squeeze. But Obi-Wan’s face was softer now in the low light than he’d ever seen it. The Force surrounding them might have rippled like a storm, flayed raw, but it was stronger than Anakin had ever felt it. “I’m sorry, Anakin. I promise that I only prod because I—I don’t like seeing you worn down. I don’t like seeing you upset. I want you to be alright.”

Anakin’s hand covered Obi-Wan’s, and he couldn’t speak, as ragged as his breaths were. But through the bond they still had, Anakin thought _did you know I’ll end this war for you, you’ll never have to fight again, I’ll destroy it all for you. I’ll end them and you’ll never have to lift a finger again, did you know that, did you know that I’ll cut Dooku and Grievous into pieces and haul them in a bag back to the Chancellor and he can call it off, for you, for you—I’ll bring you peace, I’ll bring you justice, security. I’ll ruin them and give it all to you._

Obi-Wan was frowning, when Anakin’s eyes slid back open. “Don’t give me violence, Anakin,” he said, quietly.

Anakin shifted. His ribs were screaming. “I can’t do anything else for you, Master. I don’t have anything else.”

Obi-Wan looked quizzical, at that. His hand slipped from Anakin’s face. “It was never a give-and-take, padawan. I only ever want you to be Anakin. And you’re a lot more than your skill with a lightsaber, and it unsettles me to hear you say otherwise.”

Anakin slouched so there was less pressure on his ribs, on the pain in his chest, and the bruises splashing his side. “Right,” he said, uncomfortably, disbelievingly. His skill with a lightsaber had always been one of his defining traits, especially as a Knight—his real value to the Council, his ability to punch through Separatist defenses and reduce them to scrap. He knew where his worth was.

“I don’t know if I like this pessimistic attitude,” Obi-Wan said. “Self-deprecation doesn’t lend itself to you. Your happiness is important to me, like—clearly—my peace is to you.”

“Happiness,” Anakin murmured. His tongue was thick. “You mean that?”

Obi-Wan nodded, curtly.

“Then I’m married,” Anakin blurted. His heart was hammering, but if he couldn’t tell someone who considered him a brother—as he listened to Obi-Wan said _you’re my brother, Anakin, and I love you,_ the words he’d never stop hearing, he knew that if he couldn’t tell Obi-Wan, he wasn’t truly married. Whatever souls were made out of, as completely different as Anakin’s and Obi-Wan’s were, Anakin thought that theirs fit together perfectly; and if Obi-Wan was practically half of him, and Anakin couldn’t trust him, then Anakin couldn’t trust anyone.

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “To your heinous little droid, Artoo?”  
  


Anakin bit his lip to keep from laughing. “No, no. To—to Padme. When I escorted her back to Naboo, after Geonosis, we got married at Varykino. Completely legal, just buried under a few of Naboo’s privacy laws.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes widened and his jaw slackened. “You’re—you’re not lying.”

Anakin shook his head. “It’s—it’s attachment. It’s not even in, you know, Jedi-regulated relationships, like ours—it’s not a Master-padawan bond. I didn’t just break the code, I spat on it. But it’s love. A secret marriage, but it’s—it’s real for me. It’s real for her. I trust you.”

Obi-Wan rubbed his mouth, his beard rasping under his palm. “I know that we, Anakin, as a team, play a bit fast and loose with the code,” he said. “Theologically, I’ve long since thought that—maybe it’s to the benefit of padawan and master, to be close, that it’s a relationship ordained by the Force itself. I’ve never felt more at one with the Force than I am when I’m with you. Trust, like you said.”

Anakin shuddered. He may never get tired of hearing words like that, from Obi-Wan, from his Master—he’d hoped, and then furiously tried to keep himself from hoping, and now he was half-convinced he was hallucinating. He would wake up soon, surely, because even the best parts of his dreams didn’t last long. Maybe Obi-Wan would rot before him, maybe a lightsaber would carve off his head, maybe he’d just keel over, but he’d die because he died in all of Anakin’s nightmares, and Anakin didn’t dream unless it turned black and cruel. It always did. His sleep was poison.

“I don’t know where marriage fits in,” Obi-Wan said. “I—I confess, I don’t know where to go from there. But it’s your secret, padawan, and I’ll take it to my grave if you want me to. Where you go, I follow.”

Anakin swallowed. “That’s a—a better response than, than I really expected.”

“Clearly Senator Amidala has hidden depths,” Obi-Wan said, wryly. “You would’ve been, what, nineteen, and she would’ve been—twenty-four, twenty-five? Force, she’s practically a craddlerobber.”

Anakin snorted. “Don’t say that around her, she’ll put me on the couch.”

And then it was like it really, truly sunk in, because Obi-Wan’s face shuttered and his brows drew together. “On the couch,” he said, wondrously. “So you’re always sneaking off to her when we’re on Coruscant, and no doubt that’s who you’re always hiding off to comm in your quarters—oh, by the Force, it all makes sense. Tell me if I’ve been around you too long, if a secret marriage is making sense to me.”  
  


Anakin squirmed, a bit. “We—well, we tried not to. Then we thought we were going to die on Geonosis and decided to—do it anyway.”

Obi-Wan scrubbed his face. “I was _on_ Geonosis,” he said, loudly. “I was _there,_ and—I _knew_ you had strong feelings for her, but I thought she might reciprocate, but _marriage—_ I never suspected—oh, perhaps I should have.”

“Surprise?” Anakin said, lightly.

Obi-Wan looked slightly disturbed and when he spoke, his voice was deeply petulant. “I never thought she’d go quite as far as to corrupt my padawan.”

Anakin grinned. “It’s a great kind of corruption, though.”

Obi-Wan leveled him with an unimpressed glare. “Corrupted,” he repeated. “I must ask. Are you happy?”

Anakin jerked. “Why would I not be?”

“I mean this seriously,” Obi-Wan said. “Are you happy? Does she treat you well?”

Anakin softened. One of his favorite things to do, when they had the time, was shower with her—her apartment had a massive shower with real water, and the water pressure was something divine and she’d let him turn up the heat until the bathroom was as humid as a Rylothian jungle and their skin was splotched with red. She kept a gold comb in her shower and he always combed her hair back, pressed kisses down her neck and over her shoulders, sucked at her jawline. Her hands would wander his back and thumb over scars new and old, scars long lost to the sand or scars that were fresh and burned pink, and he always had new ones. Her fingers traced the flowering figures from when Count Dooku had electrocuted him on Geonosis. He loved the quiet moments with her, as much as he loved the ones that made his heart thrum like an engine and the ones that made it flutter like a flag in the wind.

“She does,” Anakin said, softly. “I’m happy with her.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes were soft. It occurred to Anakin, with as loudly as their bond was humming between them, that Obi-Wan might have felt what Anakin just had. “Then I’ll endeavor to forgive her cradlerobbing ways,” he said.

Anakin laughed, and then soured, a bit too quickly. “I wish Ahsoka were here,” he said.

Obi-Wan’s eyes fell. “I do, as well. She’s easy to love, when she reminds me so much of you. But I have to believe she will find her way, and if we’re lucky, that way may lead back to us.”

Us, he said, because they were one—the open circle itself, the two of them, back-to-back until the Force called them home. “I love you, Obi-Wan.”

“Then you should let me look at those injuries,” Obi-Wan said. “It was quite clever of you to try and distract me with such emotional displays, padawan, but I’m afraid it won’t work.”

Anakin laughed, which quickly turned into a grunt as pain flared through him. “Point maybe taken,” he rasped.

“Lie back. And breathe deep. I’m afraid I disturbed you earlier.”

Anakin reordered himself until he was laid flat, back once again meeting with the cracked duracrete, and he couldn’t stop himself from gasping because of all the ache and effort it took. “You really didn’t,” he wheezed.

Obi-Wan’s hands were hovering cautiously over his robes. Not even cautiously—nervously, genuinely nervously. “I do think I did. Your… your guard was not up.”

“Sometimes it’s not, it happens.”

“I heard you,” Obi-Wan said, quietly. “In the Force, like a broadcast. Your presence was always strong. You—you were thinking let them have their way.”

Anakin tensed. “Early lessons,” he said, gruffly. “Will you make sure I’m not dying, already? Or else you have to explain to my secret wife how you were too scared of offending me to check my injuries.”

“I’ll also tell her of how you conspired to distract me by revealing said secret wife, of course. To level the playing field.”

But Obi-Wan’s hands had finally hooked into his robes to peel them back, to start assessing the damage. “I think she’ll agree that you’re the one out of line, here.”

“Oh, really,” Obi-Wan said.

“Absolutely,” Anakin said, a rogueish grin creeping across his face. “She’s never had a problem getting my clothes off.”

Obi-Wan spluttered, and then choked, and even in the blue light Anakin could see his cheeks darken pink. “That is not—that is—unnecessary, completely unnecessary, you—you complete fiend—”

“Breathe, Master,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan sucked in a breath. “Force, padawan. You are going to be the death of me.”

“Oh, don’t say that.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “It’s truth,” and then for a beat he fell silent, and then, “You call them early lessons. I would call it something else, if you ever wanted to—to speak to me, about it.”  
  


Anakin swallowed. It wasn’t an offer Obi-Wan had made before, unless Anakin had wildly misinterpreted some Kenobi-ism along the way; after the conversation they’d just had, that was fairly likely. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said, lightly.

Obi-Wan looked him over, and decided he was in serious need of Kix’s attention, but not immediately about to die. Obi-Wan reached to him through the Force, words and sensations flowing from his Master to himself— _cool, cooling, relax, numb, not hurting_ —and Anakin found it actually helped quite a bit. It helped more when Obi-Wan settled beside him and Anakin curled into him, pain be damned, and a warm arm settled across Anakin’s shoulders.

“Next time I worry for you,” Obi-Wan said, softly, when Anakin was halfway between the dull haze of too exhausted to be conscious but in too much pain to be unconscious, “I’m just going to lock you in an elevator and be done with it, padawan mine.”

“Might be comfier,” Anakin agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> Anakin is a great character because his loyalty is utterly insane, just give him a hug and then he'll just go burn down the galaxy until you like it. He's like a cat who brings the people he loves dead birds but this time it's like, dead people, whether they're Separatist leaders, Jedi, entire political systems, Sith Lords, or if you're lucky enough to be Luke he'll offer you a political system and then _also_ a Sith Lord. Real smorgasbord there. It's funny and also sad. 
> 
> Obi-Wan is a great character because he's literally the exact opposite, if he's loyal to you he's going to criticize you more but in the loving, you-changed-my-life-and-make-me-happy way, and you're just supposed to know it's the loving criticizing instead of the roasting he gives literally everyone else. Which naturally means Obi-Wan and Anakin genuinely don't know if they like each other because they have such wildly different forms of love-showing. One is probably less dangerous than the other, but, hey, is it really Star Wars if Anakin isn't consistently prepared to cause problems? Search your feelings.


End file.
